Twitch nixes Communities, adds tags to improve content discovery

Video game streaming service Twitch launched Communities in February of last year. These were ostensibly hub page for specific games or topics that members could create to help people find content. Now the company will shut these pages down mid-September in favor of a new tagging system. Twitch will also add 10 new categories for streamers to help describe their content for better discovery.

Twitch says that it removed Communities for a couple of reasons. For example, fewer than 3 percent of Twitch viewers came through Communities. Also, the company admits that they could be confusing and hard to access when browsing directories. The new system will allow streamers to categorize their pages from a pre-defined set of tags. Some will be auto-generated by Twitch, as well, like genre and specific in-game features.

While tags and new categories won't do exactly the same thing as Communities did, they will help you find specific games and topics that you might want to see more of. The new categories will include more non-gaming topics, too, like Art, Hobbies & Crafts, Food & Drink, Music & Performing Arts, Beauty & Body Art, Science & Technology, Just Chatting, Travel & Outdoors, Sports & Fitness, Tabletop RPGs, Special Events, Talk Shows & Podcasts, and a special ASMR category for those in need to quiet, repetitive sounds to relax.